Morality badge

Suppose there was a badge that said "I am a Moral person", that you could put on your person such that everyone you met could see it instantly. Let's look at how some increasingly advanced versions of this could work.

The Free-for-all Badge

The badge is just a pin that you can buy for a dollar and put on your coat. No background check is needed. This is very exploitable. Even if the free-for-all morality badge got a good start and won a lot of social capital, it would lose its magic after just a couple of instances of people wearing the badge behaving badly in public. 

The Lame Badge

The badge is something that makes you seem very uncool, even once people realize that it is correlated with high morality. This way, the Lame Badge wearers are protected from posers, but on the other hand they do not reap any social benefits except from each other. 

The Cumbersome Badge

The badge is something that requires a lot of work to maintain, for instance a habit. The status value of the Cumbersome Badge is limited by the amount of work that it takes to maintain. If the status is increased, for instance by an authority figure advocating the Cumbersome Badge openly, then posers will move in. 

The Permanent Badge

The badge is something like a public vow or an alteration of the body. If the badge can't be backed out of or reverted, then others can rest assured that if the person behaves badly, then they will face the consequences of their actions. The power of the Permanent Badge is inversely proportional to how easy it is to back out of the arrangement. 

The Tribal Badge

The badge is something that affiliates the person to a tribe that is recognized as being of high moral standing. Others can then rest assured that the person fears the consequences of their tribe enough be careful not to ruin the tribe's reputation. The power of the tribal badge is proportional to the person's status within the tribe. 

Examples

Free-for-all: pink ribbon, slacktivist profile picture.

Lame: geek wear, Jehovah's witnesses attire.

Cumbersome: ostentatious recycling, churchgoing (partially).

Permanent: Monk vows, marriage vows (as they worked back in the day), tattoos. 

Tribal: Wearing a Google shirt (if you work at Google), political party pins.

A Cryogenics Story, the first 1500 years

Ruben and Nino are friends. They live average lives in a developed country. In their 20's, they study at the university and enter the labor force. In their 30's, they both start families. In their 40's, they raise their families, they travel, work, and read good books. From ages 50 to 80, they continue with their old habits and live peacefully with their families. Ruben's family signs up for cryogenics. Nino's family does not. When Ruben dies at age 82 in the year 2030, his body is frozen and stored in a facility. When Nino dies, his body is buried. 

The year is 2230. Thawing of patients frozen before a major breakthrough in freezing technology 2090 is finally possible. Aging reversal has been possible for 100 years. Ruben's body is thawed, and he is given an aging reversal therapy over a couple of months in a hospital. His body is soon as it were in his 20's. His family is also thawed, and they are reunited. 

In the first years after his thawing, Ruben feels very out of touch. The world has changed very much. Physically, he is now the same age as his children and his grandchildren. The people who have been thawed generally do not have skills relevant for participating in the economy. The number of jobs that thawed people are specifically suited for, such as recounting an oral history of the past, are much fewer than the number of thawed people. Ruben and his family live on a welfare program while educating themselves about the developments of the past 200 years. 

Life in the 2230's is not great for them, but not terrible either. Ruben and his wife are two of the oldest people alive in the world, so they are a bit special. But being a thawed person does not particularly impress most people. They typically socialize with people from their own era. 

The community of people who were frozen before 2090 is quite small and closely knit, since they are people who in the first part of their life shared an optimism for the future. Most of them are also open minded to strange sounding ideas. 

After updating himself on the technology and society of the future for 10 years, Ruben finds something that he thinks that the society of 2240 lacks. He starts working on supplying this missing service. His first business fails, so he has to fall back on the welfare program. His next venture is more hobbyistic, but it also fails to get traction. Still, he enjoys the work for a couple of years before abandoning the project. After giving up his second business, the decides to try a life of scholarship. His studies are fruitful, and in 2250 he writes a book that becomes quite popular. 

In the 2250's, the spends a lot of time with new friends that he met through his research. The years pass quickly, and soon he finds himself a veteran researcher of 20 years. In the 2270's, a new finding revolutionizes his field. The new finding makes new methods necessary, methods that Ruben does not find very interesting to work with. He decides to go into temporary retirement. Ruben and his wife spend a couple of years traveling and in recreation. His intention is to start a new career soon, but he procrastinates and the years pass quickly. 

In 2290, Ruben has been retired for almost 20 years. He feels very old and tired of life. However, he is still physically 20 years old and he is not actually aging. He thinks that Nino was in a sense lucky since he never had to make an active decision to die. Of course, he also thinks himself lucky to get a second chance at life. 

A chance meeting with a new friend revitalizes his lust for life, and he decides to move to another country. Ruben and his wife have drifted apart, and they decide to separate. Ruben builds a house in a rural area in a country that he never thought he would live in. As he settles in to the new part of the world, he is stricken by emotional realization of what is possible with immortality. No project can take too long. He knew it intellectually before, but it took him 60 years of mortal impatience and boredom to emotionally accept the consequences of his new existence. He starts painstakingly chiseling stones into smooth round shapes. He moves on to rocks, and later boulders. Natural environments are strictly protected in the 2300's, but he has exploitation rights for a layer of 20 meters of bedrock beneath his country house lot. 

Ruben starts excavating a large cavern by chisel. He carves countless details and patterns in the stone. Some reliefs take years to chisel. He works in a deep concentration. While chiseling, he meditates on his place in the universe, and on the fate of the world. He finds that after a long while without new impressions, new memories come back to him. He thinks a lot about the metaphoric nature of his enterprise: he is excavating a cave of stone, while at the same time excavating a cave of memories. 

Ruben's house lot is 10x10x20 = 2000 meters. Before Ruben feels that he is done with his excavation, he had chiseled away 500 cubic metres of stone. Every day, he removes three cubic decimeters of stone. Therefore, the chiseling takes him 500 years. 

The year is 2800. Ruben feels that he has finally achieved the patience necessary to do something well. He takes a break to visit the grave of Nino. Nino feels to him now like a childhood friend who died while they were still very young. 

He thinks about what to do next. In the future, it has been proven that there are no fast general solutions to computationally difficult problems (P =/= NP). Therefore, there are still plenty of unsolved puzzles. Ruben chooses a colorful tile problem and attacks it with the patience of immortality. The challenge is to place 256 tiles in a way that obeys certain rules. He moves into a monastery in a remote area. He spends his years on a cool floor, the tiles spreading out about him. He discovers plenty of methods and observations. He does not know whether a computer or another person has already thought of the same things, and it does not concern him. After 1000 years, he has laid 255 tiles in a legitimate pattern. But he cannot place the 256th tile in a way that obeys the rules. He stands up and walks out without finishing. He writes a computer program that uses his methods, that is able to solve the problem in an afternoon. 

The year is 3800. Every 10 years or so, Ruben has to get a genetic therapy in order to be physically rejuvenated. It is getting harder and harder to get a genetic therapy that restores the body to that of a human, as they originally evolved. Most rejuvenation therapy includes some update to the body's physiology that makes maintenance cheaper. Most people just get entirely new bodies. The new body also comes with an intelligence upgrade. Ruben has not been in a hurry with this, since he reckons that immortality is a long time. However, after his work with the tiles, Ruben decides to take the next step of his life and get the upgrade. He is one of the last people to do so. 

With the intelligence upgrade, Ruben's life changes dramatically. He will later look back on the upgrade as just the beginning. 

The single reply rule

The single reply rule says that you are only allowed to make a single entry to an online thread or comment section. That is to say, not more than one comment and no replying to replies. 

What assumption is hiding behind the decision to adopt such a rule? It is the assumption that the kind of people who like to maintain a back-and-forth sequence of replies with a stranger online are not worth talking to. It's just wasting time. It's not even interesting to the readers. This is a bleak take on the internet, but I'm afraid that this is what online communities inevitably become when people who receive criticism are allowed to return criticism [1]. The only way to stop it is to not take the bait, to never reply to replies. This will not stop other people from jumping into the conversation and start wasting each other's time. At least you're not wasting your own time or energy.

Ego

When someone criticizes us online, the first instinct is to interpret this as an attack, and to return the attack. Why does it feel so important to not let a public attack to oneself stand unanswered? I think it has to do with the kind of "public" we are used to. We are used to small communities where everyone knows everyone and reputation is persistent. Coming out as the loser from a hostile exchange in such a setting can cause a permanent stain on reputation. So the instinct to defend the ego makes sort of sense in pre-urban societies, and also in artificially small communities like schools. 

In the online world, where people are more flexible to move around and switch communities, it is less important to keep up one's reputation in a specific community. So even if reputation was persistent within online communities, defending ego would be less important. The thing is, the online communities that work like like school classes are really not worth being part of. They are the bottom trough that capture all the insufferable people from school

Content

Why write anything at all? Why not adopt a rule of never ever contributing stuff online? I wouldn't blame anyone for doing that. But for me, the reason for choosing to contribute something worth reading has to do with a sense of wanting to give back to the parts of the internet that have given me endless entertainment and information. I want online communities to be fun and interesting places. The way to achieve this is not by 'saving' toxic communities by arguing with the arguers [2], but by building new ones with better culture. A sign of a good culture would be that the most honourable thing is to provide succinct, entertaining, and interesting points or counterpoints. Another sign of a good culture would be that the most shameful thing is intellectual dishonesty, and that attitudes below intellectual dishonesty (such as name-calling) do not even appear in conversation, but are blocked by everyone. 

Completeness

An additional consequence of adopting the single reply rule is that one has to make entries complete, in the sense that they can't leave obvious room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation. This increases the value to the reader. 

An exception

An exception can be made for replies that are well-meant, charitable, and are asking for clarification or more information. Such replies are constructive to the conversation and help build a positive and learning-oriented atmosphere. Note that the exception does not cover replies such as "Great post!" or "Genius comment!", since they are not asking for more information. For such cases, one can use the like button to say thanks. However, it should be noted that indiscriminate positive feedback is just the other side of the coin of indiscriminate negative feedback. 

[1] Actually, 'criticism' is a huge euphemism for most of bad faith online exchanges. 

[2] The idea of making a community nice by shouting down the trolls sounds so absurd that it's laughable to anyone who has used social media. 

Vad några svenska folktroväsen kan lära oss om riskmedvetande

Näcken, brunnsgubben, tjässan. Kanske även skogsrået, bergsrået, och bäckahästen. Låt oss gå igenom vad de är:

Näcken: sitter naken i bäcken och spelar sin fiol. Lockar till sig barn och ungdomar som går ut i bäcken. Då drar näcken ner dem i vattnet så att de drunknar. 

Brunnsgubben: sitter i brunnen och drar ner barn som lutar sig för långt ut.

Tjässan: sitter i gödselstacken och ger sig på barn som går för nära den.

Skogsrået: ett vackert kvinnligt skogsväsen som lockar unga till att följa efter henne så att de går vilse.

Bergsrået: likt skogsrået fast i klippiga områden. 

Bäckahästen: en vacker vit häst som lockar barn att stiga upp på honom. För varje barn som stiger upp så blir bäckahästen aningen längre, så att det alltid finns plats för en till. Plötsligt rider bäckahästen rakt emot en sjö och hoppar rakt ner i den, så att alla barn som rider på den drunknar. 

När vi på detta vis radar upp våra folktroväsen så framträder ett tydligt mönster. Samtliga verkar ha kommits på och spridits med syfte att skrämma, snarare än att roa. Dessutom förefaller de vara till för att skrämma unga från högst verkliga faror, snarare än att vara baserade på skrock. Dessa väsen triggas av beteende som verkligen är riskfyllt. Låt oss lista de associerade farorna:

Näcken: om man vistas i en bäck med hala stenar och kallt vatten så kan man lätt halka och drunkna. Detta var ett otroligt vanligt sätt att dö på, se: https://youtu.be/F6Y22rIyLrQ

Brunnsgubben: om man lutar sig över brunnen så kan man plötsligt halka till och falla ner så att man drunknar i brunnen, ifall man inte slår ihjäl sig först. 

Tjässan: om man går för nära gödselstacken så kan man råka andas in en stor mängd ammoniak och svimma. Svimmar man med ansiktet nere i gödselstacken så kan man dö av syrebrist.

Skogsrået och bergsrået: om man planlöst vandrar ut i naturen så kan man gå vilse. Bergsrået kan också ha haft en koppling till drunkning, hon finns omskriven i Bohuslän. 

Bäckahästen: kan vara en varning för att gå för nära vilda hästar. Eller helt enkelt drunkning. 

Något som dessa faror dessutom har gemensamt är att de alla innehåller en skarp tidpunkt, när det inte längre är möjligt att rädda sig. Detta till skillnad från faror som har med skadlig livsstil att göra. Jag gör en förutsägelse om att det inte finns något väsen som tar barn som äter skämd mat. 

Dessa väsen är också någorlunda lömska, osynliga dator. Jag gör ytterligare en förutsägelse att det aldrig funnits något eldsrå; elden är uppenbart farlig. Samma med mörkret och kylan: det behövs inget väsen för att varna unga från att ge sig ut en kall vinternatt. Även gårdens djur passar in i denna kategori: det behövs inga sagor som varnar en för att gå föra nära hästar, svin, och tjurar.

Syftet med att skapa och sprida en historia om ett väsen är alltså att ge en inkarnation åt en fara som är plötslig och lömsk. Ett väsen gör att faran uppfattas som aktiv, snarare än som en passiv risk. Det blir ett sätt att kompensera för somliga barns övertro till sin egen förmåga. 

Vad kan vi lära oss av det här idag? Att tänka igenom det här har ökat min respekt för riskmedvetande i bondesamhället. Att dra en saga om ett väsen är ett smart sätt att rädda sina barn från vissa faror, tills de vet bättre. I upplysningens tidsålder tycker jag dock att man ska kunna göra det bättre. En saga om ett väsen kan gå i baklås och tvärtom locka barn att gå och försöka söka upp till exempel Näcken. 

En förälder som vill uppfostra barn som tänker själv, bör inte börja med avsiktliga lögner. Istället kan man berätta om barn som till exempel har gått ut i bäcken, halkat på en sten och drunknat. Det är inte en vetenskaplig studie, men vetenskapliga bevis är inte heller nödvändiga för att motivera varför man ska undvika livsfaror. Det räcker med ett anekdotiskt men verkligt skäl.

The Problem with Nostalgia

The problem with nostalgia is that nostalgia itself is not much to be nostalgic about. If we spend the 2020's reliving the 90's or the 00's, our decade will not be a very interesting time period for future observers. I think this was already a problem in the 10's. There is a tradeoff between cherishing old memories and creating new ones. Right now (October 2020), I think we'd be better off by being less nostalgic, on the margin. 

The Annie Hall Effect

Negative feedback of compatibility. In other words: when the process of being in a relationship with someone makes that person become less compatible with you. 

Named after Annie Hall (1977), where the eponymous Annie is initially very attractive to Woody Allen's character, except for the fact that she is not very educated. When they live together, he convinces her to take some courses at the university. This makes her conspicuously more like him, a shock that their relationship is not strong enough for.

Lack of fences: an underrated aspect of walkability

Walkability is not only sidewalks and bicycle lanes. These structures make pedestrians and cyclists use the same way from A to B as a car would. This can be unnecessarily long, if that is the only option. 

A neighborhood designed with walkers and bicyklists in mind should not have fences on the best best shortcuts. It could be a concrete wall walling off one end of a parking lot. It could be a fence between two condo apartment houses with different owners. It could be a thick row of hedges in a single family home area. 

To a walker, this makes a big difference. Walking is slow, so walking a couple of hundred metres just to find oneself in a dead end is annoying. This discourages discovery, and decreases walking in the area. Dead ends and fences also drastically reduce the number of possible good routes from A to B in an area. So walking in the same area becomes repetitive, which further reduces walking. 

Maybe this is not an unfortunate outcome in some cases, but the intended one? Do planners and owners expect that walkability will increase crime and loud street life? About crime I say that for each criminal who finds their way into a walkable neighborhood, ten witnesses also do. A dead end will attract zero witnesses, but may attract a nonzero amount of thieves. About loitering: it's often enough to ask people nicely to keep it quiet. A really successful walkable area will be so nice that parents let their young kids play outside. This makes it a "kid area" which can even repel noisy teenagers.

The benefit of pedestrian and bicycle traffic is that it's less bothersome to the people next to it. Pedestrians also have less range, so one can afford to let pedestrians cross straight through one's neighborhood, without worrying that a bunch of people will come from far away and make a lot of noise, as is the case with a large road.